Past & Present

Current Projects

WEST VIRGINIA

The Traditional Bacteria Leavened Breads project focuses on the sociology and microbiology of bacteria-leavened breads, as opposed to yeast-leavened breads. Long ago, in isolated locales, perhaps where beer-making wasn’t prevalent, ancient women gathered pulses and grains that were indigenous to their specific region of the world. These women devised just the right conditions to capture wild bacteria and ferment their pulses and grains to create unique and superbly delicious “raised” breads. Only a few regions in the world have established these culturally-rich food heritages. This project focuses on Cyprus (Arcatena bread), Sudan (Gargoush bread), Turkey (Eftazymo), and the Appalachian region of the United States (Salt rising bread).

COLOMBIA

Asociación Sembrando Semillas de Paz,’ Sembrandopaz’, is a non-profit civil entity, legally founded in 2005, but based on nearly twenty years of previous work. We are dedicated to facilitating the construction of a culture of peace, building capacity among grassroots organizations, with the goal of supporting processes of integral and sustainable human development within the peasant populations of the Caribbean region in Colombia who are victims of the armed conflict.

BELIZE

The proposed activities describe a professional development workshop for educators in Belize and USA to augment their environmental science content, use of technology, and multicultural pedagogical skills so as to motivate students towards global science with technology applications (GST).

Conduct comparisons between the local climate, water/riparian environments, and living flora/fauna systems in the Belize tropical forest/stream/reef ecosystems with U.S. arboreal forest/streams using hands-on inquiry activities.

Work in partnership to design classroom projects across borders utilizing internet communications.

Utilize Belizean indigenous culture and their elements of social capital, along with effective metacognitive/multicultural strategies to enhance communication and learning of students towards GST.

Evaluate the GST training outcomes and the learning processes among students, employing evaluation tools aligned with national programs in both countries.

NEPAL

It is a part of our effort to empower girls and teach them leadership skills, foster analytical thinking inside and outside of their classrooms. It is targeted at girls aged 11-16 from schools with minimum 50% female student body and institutional female leadership. The requirements is also students’ commitment to report regularly in detail on their process.

Under the leaderships of two girls, the students learn how to apply for a small grant, analyze and explain what they hope to achieve and report in detail on project planning and implementation. A team of two girls from different communities and castes leads a whole class through the process of conducting a small community project. They submit reports to us, facilitate the discussions and consensus decision making. They assign responsibilities within the class and make sure things go as planned. Different people are assigned to take notes during meetings, identifying the best way to buy supplies and purchasing them.